In July, when it became clear that we had a shot at bringing in Phil Kessel, we had to make a big decision. Acquiring Kessel would cost us not only young talent and draft picks, but it would also come with a significant salary-cap hit. Thereís always a cost. In this case, we had to be sure that Phil would fit into our room, and into our system.

In times like that, you have to rely on your box. Inside your box is all the stuff you canít look up on the Internet. During your travels in this game, from city to city, hotel to hotel, you talk to a lot of people. You hear things. You learn all kinds of things about players. And you file it all away in your box. Over my 30 years as a GM, my box has gotten pretty full.

It was always my understanding from my intel around the league that Phil was a good guy. If I have one defining management philosophy, itís that I really believe in second chances. If a player is a good guy, and heís got talent, and you give him a second chance, heíll give you everything heís got.

The Kessel decision ultimately came down to a simple fact about the NHL that never seems to change: Itís hard to score goals in this league. Itís just hard. But Phil was a guy who had scored them year after year. He had been in a fishbowl in Toronto and he still scored 30 every year. I felt if we gave him a second chance, heíd really thrive in Pittsburgh.

So Phil came into our locker room that fall and, after watching him for a few weeks, I filed a new note into my box:

I am pro-Phil and wish him well but Jim Rutherford got a first-rate NHL wing for an incredible price so there's a limit to the extent that I care that he thinks Kessel is a swell fella to boot.

There's nothing to regret about the deal from the Leafs end but I don't think any of us should be happy about those circumstances either. Rutherford seems to have been willing to let the deal die if the Leafs wouldn't eat salary so it's not exactly an act of genius on his part either.

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Give a man the reputation of an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon-Mark Twain